Songbirds Speed Tap Dance

High-speed cameras reveal that certain songbirds tap dance and sing so speedily that the fancy footwork is otherwise invisible to humans and other animals (see video below).

The discovery, published in the journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates how songbirds can flirt, woo, and otherwise communicate with each other completely under the radar of other animals' sensory perceptions.

"The tap dancing is very fast and is completely invisible to the naked human eye," Masayo Soma of Hokkaido University told Discovery News. "Even a normal digital video camera cannot capture their motion, as the tapping is quicker than one frame."

Soma, Nao Ota and Manfred Gahr observed the behavior in the songbirds known as the blue-capped cordonbleu and the red-cheeked cordonbleu (from the genus Uraeginthus). They suspect that the blue-breasted cordonbleu, the purple grenadier, the common grenadier and possibly other songbirds also dance and sing in a similar manner.

What's more, the researchers noted that the tap dancing birds would often rhythmically wave around a twig or other eye-catching object as they performed.

The scientists suspect that the routines are intricate courtship displays designed to unite a male and female.

The routines even provide intriguing clues about the evolution of dancing in birds, as well as in humans and other animals.

As Soma pointed out, loud singing can "be an advertisement" to anyone within earshot who can detect those particular sounds. Dancing, on the other hand, is usually much more intimate. While humans may dance on a stage for large audiences, the behavior is usually reserved in the animal kingdom for visual and even sensual communications meant for a potential mate.

In addition to the novel finding about super speedy tap dancing birds, the study documents the first known female songbirds that can perform complex courtship displays with the same skill as their male counterparts.

Both male and female cordon bleu songbirds are extremely choosy, so the scientists suspect that could have contributed to their evolving such elaborate song and dance routines.

Sue Anne Zollinger, a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, said that although the songbird dancing is invisible to human eyes without special equipment, the birds have higher visual sensitivity, which she referred to as a "higher flicker fusion threshold." So birds both see and hear the tap dancing moves.

"The complex high speed foot tapping not only adds a visual component to the courtship display, but also an acrobatic element that may demonstrate how physically fit the dancer is," Zollinger said.

She added, "In addition, the foot taps may also add to the acoustic part of the display, like a one-man band that sings while simultaneously playing the drums."

She was very interested to learn of the female dancing and singing skill, since that finding adds to the growing body of evidence that female birds might be more vocal and visually demonstrative than once believed. In some other bird species, however, it appears that females lost such abilities over evolutionary time.

Zollinger wonders if feeling vibrations created by the foot tapping is an important element of the dancing, given that the birds tend to bust a move in unison when they are next to each other on a perch.

that helps to explain how birds fly in such impressive formations. Lead researcher Steven Portugal and his colleagues focused their study on northern bald ibises, but many bird species also exhibit the amazing flight behavior.
Portugal, a University of London Royal Veterinary College researcher, told Discovery News that birds could be using three things to achieve their flying precision: "(1) vision – watching the bird in flight to get all the information they need, (2) feathers – sensing the changes in pressure, wind etc. through their flight feathers, and (3) positive feedback – i.e. they just fly around and when it feels easier/better they stay in that position."

The researchers determined that birds try to find "good air," meaning airflows (not just wind, but even the air created by other flapping wings) that minimize their energy expenditure and help them to get where they plan to go. Conversely, birds avoid regions of "bad air" that could work against them.

Many birds fly in distinctive V-formations. Portugal said, "The intricate mechanisms involved in V formation flight indicate remarkable awareness and ability of birds to respond to the wing path of nearby flock-mates. Birds in V formation seem to have developed complex phasing strategies to cope with the dynamic wakes (turbulent air) produced by flapping wings."

Military planes sometimes fly in what is known as an "echelon formation," which mirrors nearly the exact same flight formation of many birds. This particular bird version is a variation of the "V," only with a rounded edge.

The U.S. Navy's famous flight demonstration squadron The Blue Angels often flies in a trademark "diamond formation" once popularized by fighter-bomber pilots. In it, the pilots maintain an 18-inch wing tip to canopy separation. Birds can fly even more tightly together.

The term "murmuration" refers to a flock of starlings. These birds can create dramatic patterns in the sky, such as this one over marshlands near Tønder, Denmark. Other small birds, such as sandpipers, may also create what look to be dazzling aerial ballets in the sky as they fly en masse.

Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film "The Birds" included many scenes where numerous birds blanketed the sky. Up close, these starlings look small and harmless but, as a huge murmuration, their power becomes evident.

From the earliest planes to those in design today, aircraft have been modeled after birds. It's no wonder. Every inch of this sleek northern bald ibis, snapped while flying over Tuscany, adds to the bird's flying prowess.
Its 53-inch wingspan and powerful, synchronized wing beats must have captivated people in the ancient world too, since ancient Egyptians and other early cultures featured the birds prominently in their artwork and legends.